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May 27 2023
Law and Economics
By:
Walter Block
Libel is in the news. The high-profile case, of course, is the result in the defamation lawsuit in which Fox News settled with Dominion for $787.5 million. But the chess world is not too far behind, with a slander case brought by Grandmaster Hans Niemann demanding $100 in damages from world champion Magnus Carlsen wh...
May 26 2023
Economics of Education
By:
Scott Sumner
Friday night football is a tradition in the state of Texas, with high school games often attracting very large crowds. Today, I came across a couple of news stories that suggest this cultural tradition indirectly impacts public policy.Bloomberg has a story about Governor Abbott's attempt to expand school choice in Texa...
May 26 2023
Incentives
By:
David Henderson
Montesquieu: "Peace is the natural effect of trade." KYIV, Ukraine — Despite a brutal Russian invasion that has killed tens of thousands of Ukrainian soldiers and civilians and laid waste to swaths of the country, Ukraine continues to allow Russian oil and gas to cross its territory to serve its European neighbors ...
May 25 2023
Macroeconomics
By:
Scott Sumner
David Beckworth directed me to an interesting debate at a recent Brookings panel. Olivier Blanchard and Ben Bernanke presented a paper that evaluated various factors in the recent inflation surge, highlighting the role of supply issues related to food, energy, shortages, etc. To be clear, they noted that some of the su...
May 25 2023
#ReadWithMe
By:
Kevin Corcoran
Randall Holcombe’s Following Their Leaders: Political Preferences and Public Policy makes the case that contrary to the usual description of democracy, where voters call the shots with their votes and political leaders craft policies as the voters direct, political leaders control and craft policy, and voters follow ...
May 25 2023
Economic Growth
By:
David Henderson
When I wrote the op/ed on Robert E. Lucas in the Wall Street Journal last week, I was unaware of an article he wrote in 2004 for the Federal Reserve Bank of Minneapolis. It's Robert E. Lucas, Jr., "The Industrial Revolution: Past and Future," May 1, 2004. It's quite good. (HT2 Art Carden.) And here is the last pa...
May 24 2023
EconLog
By:
David Henderson
A one-infant increase in the child–staff ratio requirement for infants is associated with a decrease in the cost of care of between 9 percent and 20 percent, which translates into a reduction in the annual cost of child care of between $850 and $1,890 for the average cost of care across states. This is...
Read this Pierre Lemieux Book Review
May 1 2023
Book Review
By Pierre Lemieux
A Book Review of Law, Legislation, and Liberty, by Friedrich A. Hayek. Jeremy Shearmur, editor.1 Friedrich Hayek's trilogy Law, Legislation, and Liberty, published in three separate volumes in 1973, 1976, and 1979, was recently republished in a single book under the careful editorship of Jeremy Shearmur. The l...
May 23 2023
Regulation
By:
Scott Sumner
I have a confession to make. I've never understood military history. I don't go out of my way to read military history, but while reading ordinary history I've often run across explanations of how the world's greatest generals were able to achieve their success. There is frequently a description of how a general would ...
May 23 2023
Economic History
By:
Pierre Lemieux
A normative extension of standard economic theory is that an individual is the best judge of what is good for himself. At least, there is no way to determine who else would be a better judge, and especially who should be entitled to impose his own preferences by force. The choice of a consumer, producer (including work...
May 22 2023
Regulation
By:
David Henderson
In a case that highlights the critical need for local housing and the lengths some people will undertake to profit from it, county officials say they are fining property owners Nicolas and Ana Ruvalcaba nearly $60,000 for renting out at least 62 illegal dwellings to farmworkers and their families on San Miguel Canyon R...
May 22 2023
Free Markets
By:
David Henderson
In response to my Wall Street Journal op/ed on the accomplishments of the late Robert E. Lucas, John Tamny wrote a response in Forbes that finds fault with much of what I wrote. His article is titled "When Did Market Intervention Become Chic to 'Free Market' Economists?" This is my fairly comprehensive response. Sta...
May 21 2023
Economic Methods
By:
Scott Sumner
John Cochrane has an excellent post discussing Bob Lucas's contributions to macroeconomics. Here's a point that I also keep harping on: The Fed often asks economists for advice, “should we raise the funds rate?” Post Lucas macroeconomists answer that this isn’t a well posed question. It’s like saying “shou...
May 21 2023
Political Economy
By:
Pierre Lemieux
The current presidential election in Turkey gives an example of a phenomenon that is characteristic of politics and which is not absent from the American scene: unrestrained political competition is the ne plus ultra of the proverbial race to the bottom. As the main opposition candidate tries to defeat Turkey’s popul...
May 21 2023
Cryptocurrency
By:
James Broughel
The quantity theory of money (QTM) is a cornerstone of macroeconomic theory, and it states that changes in the supply of money have a proportional impact on the overall price level in an economy. It is most often associated with the 20th-century economists Irving Fisher and Milton Friedman. The theory has roots that go...
May 21 2023
Business Cycles
By:
David Henderson
[caption id="attachment_65426" align="alignnone" width="300"] Robert Lucas[/caption] I learned that Bob had read the paper (Sargent, 1977) when he called me on the phone to tell me that the Boston Federal Reserve Bank research department director had invited him to write for the Bank’s annual Martha Vine...